Speeding Rajdhani kills elephant

A speeding Rajdhani sent another elephant — the eighth this year — to Assam’s expanding jumbo graveyard on Saturday morning. In the process, it underscored the Northeast Frontier Railway’s (NFR) “reluctance” to adhere to speed limits in animal corridors, reports Rahul Karmakar.

A speeding Rajdhani sent another elephant — the eighth this year — to Assam’s expanding jumbo graveyard on Saturday morning. In the process, it underscored the Northeast Frontier Railway’s (NFR) “reluctance” to adhere to speed limits in animal corridors.

The New Delhi-bound train knocked the elephant down near Lamchakhan railway station, 176 km east of Guwahati.

An NFR spokesman claimed the stretch wasn’t one of the 16 elephant corridors that require trains to run below 20 kmph.

The corridors — identified under a project undertaken by the NFR, Assam Forest Department and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) in 2008 — make up 62.8 km of rail tracks. The project was prompted by the death of 49 elephants in 34 train-hits in Assam between 1998 and 2008.

But animal activists claim railway authorities seldom heed the warning, and tend not to cooperate. People For Animals activist Sangeeta Goswami said that on February 28, the NFR was informed about the movement of a herd of elephants but “they chose to ignore it and a goods train killed two of the elephants”.